TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, who visited Taiwan in 1997, said in an interview with Fox News that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to go to Taiwan because to back down now would encourage more bad behavior from China, which is not even necessarily in a strong position to bully the U.S.
“I think Speaker Pelosi now has no choice. Now that the Chinese Communist Party are dancing around and making threats and all that, she has to go to Taiwan, because to back down now would encourage every aggressive bullying attitude of the dictatorship, and I think it would be a disaster.”
He said he was hoping to see Pelosi in Taiwan soon and thought the Chinese Communists would then calm down. He called all the threats from China against Pelosi’s reported Taiwan visit bluffs and nonsense.
“The fact is that they are not gonna take on the United States, they are not gonna take on the speaker of the House, and all these various threats are nonsense. They are not gonna happen,” Gingrich said.
Reacting to Fox News host Sean Hannity saying that China has threatened to shoot down Pelosi’s airplane, the former House speaker said, “The worst case is they shot down her airplane. That would be literally an act of war, and we would have no choice except to retaliate massively. People tend to forget that the US, despite the weakness of the Pentagon, despite all of the truly woke and stupid behavior, still has a powerful military.”
Gingrich then pointed out that China is not in a strong position to bully the US, which could isolate China very fast.
“With our allies in Australia and in Japan and elsewhere, we could isolate China very fast. If they can’t export, they start to go broke, and their cities start to have unemployment. If they can’t export, they begin to starve, so the Chinese are not necessarily in a strong position to try to bully us, and I think we need to recognize that.”
The former House speaker went on to say that if the US gave in to Chinese threats, that would bolster China’s ambition to occupy Taiwan.
“It’s really important when you are dealing with a dictatorship to stand up to them and make them realize that the reality is that there are limits to what they can accomplish,” Gingrich said, adding that if the US caves now, China might then decide to push even further by trying to occupy Taiwan.
